Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega and his wife are on absolute terms after loyalists approved a constitutional amendment that would elevate Ortega to the status of “co-president” and strengthen the couple's joint rule over the country. will hold a lot of power.
Ortega himself has proposed the changes in response to sanctions for human rights violations, which would also tighten the president's control over the media and extend his presidential term from five to six years.
Nicaragua's parliament is under the control of Ortega's ruling FSLN party, and National Assembly Speaker Gustavo Porras said Friday that the bill had been approved “unanimously.”
It is almost certain that he will pass the second examination in January.
In what critics describe as a crony dictatorship, President Ortega, 79, has tightened his control over all areas of the country and increasingly, with the help of his powerful wife, Vice President Rosario Murillo, 73. Working in an authoritarian manner.
The former guerrilla served as president from 1985 to 1990, returning to power in 2007. Since then, Nicaragua has imprisoned hundreds of people, both genuine and perceived opponents.
Ortega's government has targeted its critics and shut down more than 5,000 NGOs since mass protests in 2018 that the United Nations estimates left more than 300 people dead.
Thousands of Nicaraguans are in exile and the regime is under US and EU sanctions. Currently, most independent and opposition media outlets operate from abroad.
The proposed constitutional amendment would ban “traitors to the fatherland” from citizenship, as the Ortega government has already done against hundreds of politicians, journalists, intellectuals, and activists, especially those deemed critical. stipulates that the person can be deprived of the
Ortega and Murillo have accused the church, journalists and NGOs of supporting the coup attempt over the 2018 protests.
The changes will also allow for tighter control over the media and the church, which will no longer be influenced by “foreign interests.”
The co-presidents would then be given the power to coordinate all “legislative, judicial, electoral, administrative and supervisory bodies, local and municipal authorities” that were previously independent under the Constitution.
Manuel Orozco, a Nicaraguan analyst at the Inter-American Dialogue, told AFP that the reforms “guarantee the presidential succession” of Murillo and the couple's son, Laureano Ortega.
In September, the Geneva-based UN human rights office warned of a “serious” deterioration in human rights under Ortega's government in its annual report on Nicaragua.
The report cites violations including arbitrary arrests of political opponents, torture, mistreatment in detention, increased violence against indigenous peoples, and attacks on religious freedom.
The revised constitution defines Nicaragua as a “revolutionary” socialist state, and the country's symbols include the red and black colors of the FSLN (the guerrilla-turned-party that overthrew the U.S.-backed dictator in 1979). It will include a flag.
Constitutional law expert Azahalea Solis said the change would exclude other political ideologies, and Salvador Malenko, a human rights lawyer in exile in Costa Rica, said it would put an end to the principles of political pluralism and separation of powers. He said he was deaf.
“All the reforms are about what is actually happening in Nicaragua, which is a de facto dictatorship,” Dora Maria Telles, a former Ortega comrade and critic, told AFP from exile in the United States. spoke.
When Ortega proposed the amendment earlier this week, Luis Almagro, secretary-general of the Organization of American States, called it “an extraordinary form of institutionalizing the conjugal dictatorship.”
He also called the effort an “invasion of the democratic rule of law.”
